Why Yuri Gagarin Remains the First Man in Space, Even Though He Did Not Land Inside His Spacecraft | National Air and Space Museum National Air and Space Museum Get Involved Story Why Yuri Gagarin Remains the First Man in Space, Even Though He Did Not Land Inside His Spacecraft Posted on Mon, April 12 2010 Email Every year as the anniversary of the first human spaceflight approaches, I receive calls inquiring about the validity of Yuri Gagarin’s claim as the first human in space. The legitimate questions focus on the fact that Gagarin did not land inside his spacecraft. The reasoning goes that since he did not land inside his spacecraft, he disqualified himself from the record books. This might seem to be a very reasonable argument, but Gagarin remains the first man in space. The justification for Gagarin remaining in that position lies in the organization that sets the standards for flight. Soviet cosmonaut Major Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, probably on or about April 12, 1961, when he made his orbital space flight in Vostok 1.

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) is the world's air sports federation. It was founded in 1905 as a non-governmental and non-profit making international organization to further aeronautical and astronautical activities worldwide. Among its duties, the FAI certifies and registers records. Its first records in aviation date back to 1906. The organization also arbitrates disputes over records. If nationals from two different countries claim a record, it is the FAI’s job to examine the submitted documentation and make a ruling as to who has accomplished the feat first. When it was apparent that the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were planning to launch men into space, the FAI specified spaceflight guidelines. One of the stipulations that the FAI carried over from aviation was that spacecraft pilots, like aircraft pilots should land inside their craft in order for the record to be valid. In the case of aviation, this made perfect sense. No one wanted to encourage pilots to sacrifice themselves for an aviation record. Piloting an aircraft that could not land did nothing to further aeronautical engineering.

When Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth on 12 April 1961, the plan had never been for him to land inside his Vostok spacecraft. His spherical reentry capsule came through the Earth’s atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory. Soviet engineers had not yet perfected a braking system that would slow the craft sufficiently for a human to survive impact. They decided to eject the cosmonaut from his craft. Yuri Gagarin ejected at 20,000 feet and landed safely on Earth. Soviet engineers had not discussed this shortcoming with Soviet delegates to the FAI prior to his flight. They prepared their documents for the FAI omitting this fact. This led everyone to believe that Gagarin had landed inside his spacecraft. It was not until four months later, when German Titov became the second human to orbit the Earth and the first person to spend a full day in space, when the controversy began to brew. Titov owned up to ejecting himself. This led to a special meeting of the delegates to the FAI to reexamine Titov’s spaceflight records.

The conclusion of the delegates was to rework the parameters of human spaceflight to recognize that the great technological accomplishment of spaceflight was the launch, orbiting and safe return of the human, not the manner in which he or she landed. Gagarin and Titov’s records remained on the FAI books. Even after Soviet -made models of the Vostok spacecraft made it clear that the craft had no braking capability, the FAI created the Gagarin Medal that it awards annually to greatest aviation or space achievement of that year. One should keep other examples of a sports federations’ reconsideration of rules in the face of new techniques and technologies in mind when considering the FAI Gagarin decision. The underwater dolphin kick in freestyle swimming and the introduction of the clap skate in speed skating both caused initial international flaps. After the respective sports federations voted to accept these changes, that ended the controversy. Yes, Gagarin did not follow the rules that the FAI established before his flight. However, as is true with any sports organization, the FAI reserved the right to reexamine and reinterpret its rules in light of new knowledge and circumstances.

Yuri Gagarin remains indisputably the first person in space and the concept that the first cosmonauts had to land inside their spacecraft is a faded artifact of the transition from aviation to spaceflight. You may also like 6/12/2006 • American History On the morning of February 20, 1962, millions of Americans collectively held their breath as the world’s newest pioneer swept across the threshold of one of man’s last frontiers. Roughly a hundred miles above their heads, astronaut John Glenn sat comfortably in the weightless environment of a 9 1/2-by-6-foot space capsule he called Friendship 7. Within these close quarters he worked through his flight plan and completed an array of technical and medical tests as he cruised through the heavens. It offered the leg room of a Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ and the aesthetics of a garbage can, but the small capsule commanded an extraordinary view of the planet Earth. Through the craft’s window, Glenn saw thick, puffy, white clouds blanketing much of southern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

The Atlas Mountains of North Africa stood like proud, majestic statues on a planet that seemed as timeless as the stars that twinkled an eternity away. Dust storms blew across the deserts, and smoke from brush fires swirled into the atmosphere. ‘Oh, that view is tremendous,’ Glenn remarked over the radio to capsule communicator (Capcom) Alan Shepard, his fellow Mercury astronaut stationed back at mission control. As Friendship 7 passed over the Indian Ocean, Glenn witnessed his first sunset from space, a panorama of beautiful, brilliant colors. Before the conclusion of that historic day, he would witness a total of four sunsets–three while in earth orbit, and the fourth from the deck of his recovery ship. For Glenn, the historic voyage of Friendship 7 remains as vivid today as if it had happened yesterday. People still ask him what it felt like to be the first American to orbit the earth. And often he thinks of his capsule’s breathtaking liftoff and those subtle, emotionally empowering sunrises and sunsets. ‘Here on earth you see a sunrise, it’s golden, it’s orange,’ Glenn recalled recently.

‘When you’re in space, and you’re coming around on a sunset or sunrise, where the light comes to you refracted through the earth’s atmosphere and back out into space, to the space craft that refraction has the same glowing color for all the colors of the spectrum . . . .’ There have been more than ten thousand sunsets since his orbital flight helped launch the United States deeper into a space race with the former Soviet Union. And although Glenn’s political career as a Democratic senator from Ohio has kept him in the public eye, he is remembered by many of his countrymen as the first American to circle the planet and as the affable spokesman for the seven Mercury astronauts. Glenn marvels at how people all over the world still recall the heady days of the Mercury program. ‘It’s been heartwarming in some respects and it’s amazing in others,’ he says. ‘I don’t go around all day, saying ‘Don’t you want to hear about my space experience?’ Quite the opposite. But if the kids come to the office here, or if I run into them on the subway and they want to stop a minute, I don’t hesitate to stop and talk.

I think it’s good; I think that’s a duty we [former astronauts] have.’ By the time Glenn and Friendship 7 burst through the earth’s atmosphere, the United States was already a distant second in space technology, behind the Soviet Union. The race to begin to explore the universe had unofficially begun on October 4, 1957, when the Soviets launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite. ‘I think Sputnik sort of forced the hand,’ explains Gene Kranz, who served as Project Mercury’s assistant flight director and section chief for flight control operations. ‘I think we found ourselves an embarrassing second in space and related technologies. We were second best, and Americans generally don’t like that kind of a role.’ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, was more concerned about the country’s security than its self-esteem. With the Soviets having the rocket power to propel a satellite into space, he wondered how long it would be before they were capable of launching a nuclear bomb toward the United States. In response to this perceived Soviet threat, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) into being on July 29, 1958.

One of the first assignments given to the new agency was to launch a man into space and return him safely to earth, and that fall, Project Mercury was created to fulfill that daunting task. On April 9, 1959, NASA formally introduced to the world the seven test pilots who would, it was hoped, carry the U.S. banner to the heavens. Selected were: Lieutenant Commanders Malcolm Scott Carpenter, Walter Marty Schirra, and Alan B. Shepard of the Navy; Air Force captains Leroy Gordon Cooper, Virgil I. ‘Gus’ Grissom, and Donald ‘Deke’ Slayton; and Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn of the Marine Corps. Born on July 18, 1921, Glenn was the oldest of the group, arguably the most celebrated, and an obvious candidate for Mercury from the beginning. A veteran of World War II and the Korean War, Glenn had flown 149 combat missions and been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross five times. After completing test-pilot school in 1954, Glenn went to work testing the fastest jets America could produce.

His rsum sparkled even more in 1957 after he set a transcontinental speed record for the first flight to average supersonic speed (seven hundred miles per hour) from Los Angeles to New York. From their first public appearance together, the Mercury 7 astronauts, as they came to be known, were celebrities and heroes. ‘We were at first extremely surprised when we were announced to the whole world, and how crazy everybody went over the whole thing,’ laughs Cooper. But enthusiasm for the project was one thing; making it a success was more difficult. There were countless variables and unknowns to conquer: weightlessness, a new capsule, an inconsistent booster in the Atlas rocket, and of course, the awesome specter of space. ‘To put it bluntly, we didn’t know what we were doing in many areas of the Mercury program and we were fortunate our country understood there was no achievement without risk,’ admits Kranz. As the Mercury project evolved and moved into the next decade, NASA found a crucial supporter in President John F. Kennedy. Just weeks into his term, however, the Soviets scored another technological coup.

On April 2, 1961, Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space, orbiting the earth once during his one hour, forty-eight minute flight, which came just three months after a U.S. Redstone rocket had carried a chimp named Ham into space and brought him safely back. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard made America’s first, manned suborbital voyage, flying for 15 minutes and reaching an altitude of 116 miles. Compared to Gagarin’s flight around the world, Shepard’s 302-mile mission was a mere stopover between ports of call. It was, however, a major boost to America’s pride. While Gagarin flew under a cloak of secrecy, Shepard’s flight was broadcast live on television. The early success of the Mercury Program spurred President Kennedy to inspire NASA to reach for new heights. On May 25, he grabbed the world’s attention when he told Congress that the nation’s new goal was to complete a manned trip to the moon before the end of the decade.

For the first time in its space duel with the Soviet Union, the United States, which had so far amassed just 15 minutes of manned space-flight time, had set the stakes. Gene Kranz recalls with a laugh that ‘. . . we thought he was crazy,’ but the astronauts also felt energized to meet the new challenge. NASA turned its efforts up a notch that summer. In July, Gus Grissom replicated Shepard’s short suborbital flight, and by the fall, NASA was ready to attempt putting a spacecraft in orbit. As a final test in preparation for a manned trip, a chimpanzee named Enos was launched into space in late November. The craft carrying Enos completed two orbits before landing safely back on earth, after which NASA announced that on December 20 of that year, John Glenn would make the first American orbital flight. Before taking this next giant leap toward the moon, however, NASA had to ensure that an astronaut could function in a weightless environment for an extended period of time. Some scientists feared that without proper equipment and technology, a space traveler’s eyeballs would bulge out of their sockets and change shape.

This, in turn, would distort his vision and preclude his flying the craft should any of the automatic controls fail. Also, scientists feared that fluid in the inner ear might float freely into the air and that Glenn would become so nauseated and disoriented that he would be unable to perform his tasks. In addition to its concerns about Glenn’s adaptability to weightlessness, NASA worried about the inconsistent Atlas booster, the huge rocket designed to push Glenn’s ship into orbit. Two of the five unmanned test firings conducted on the 93-foot Atlas prior to Glenn’s mission had failed. The memory of one of those failures has remained vivid for Glenn. It was a night test, he remembers, ‘and it was very dramatic–searchlights and a beautiful starlit night. Not a cloud in the sky. They light this thing, and up she goes . . . . At about 27,000 feet it blew up right over our heads. It looked like an atom bomb went off right there.’ To add to the mounting tension, poor weather and mechanical problems with the rocket forced NASA to’scrub’ Glenn’s scheduled mission nine times.

Finally, on February 20, 1962, seven months after America’s last manned flight, John Glenn would don his bulky pressure suit for what would be the final time. Rising out of bed in his ‘ready room’ at NASA’s space craft center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:20 a.m., he checked the weather report, which indicated a fifty percent chance of rain. Glenn showered and shaved and had the customary astronaut’s breakfast of steak and eggs, before taking a pre-flight physical. If the many weeks of anticipation weighed on Glenn’s mind, his body did not reflect it. Four hours later, Glenn made the short ride to the rocket’s launch site. When he emerged from the transfer van, Launch Pad 14 resembled a movie set as giant floodlights waved streams of milky white upon the rocket and the surrounding area. The huge Atlas was a glowing silver sword in the coal black night. ‘My flight was–it was like you staged it,’ recalls Glenn. ‘It was Hollywoodesque.’ Two hours before his scheduled liftoff, Glenn squeezed into the cramped cabin of Friendship 7, perched atop the Atlas rocket.

The sky was clearing, and just before 8:00 a.m. technicians began the laborious task of bolting on the entry hatch of the craft. Sealed inside the capsule, Glenn felt truly alone. The minutes ticked by slowly as he calmly and methodically worked through his preflight checklist. Finally, Glenn heard the flight team give his mission an ‘A-OK’ over the radio. With all systems functioning normally, Glenn acknowledged his preparedness with a firm ‘ready.’ As the final countdown to liftoff began, backup pilot Scott Carpenter’s voice crackled over Glenn’s radio: ‘Godspeed, John Glenn.’ At 9:47 a.m. the rocket’s three engines ignited. Friendship 7 began to vibrate as the mighty Atlas built up 350,000 pounds of thrust, the force needed to lift Glenn and his craft into orbit. For a few interminable seconds, the massive rocket held steady. Finally, its hold-down clamps released, and the Atlas slowly, agonizingly clutched and pulled at the bright blue sky. ‘We are under way,’ Glenn reported to Mercury Control.

Minutes later, Glenn was a hundred miles above the earth and traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour. With all systems running smoothly during his initial orbit, Control advised him that he ‘had a go’ for at least seven turns around the earth. Unlike Soviet Cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who had experienced nausea and dizziness during his recent 16-orbit flight, Glenn worked and ate without difficulty. As he gazed earthward through the capsule’s window, he noted how fragile the planet appeared, shielded from the unforgiving vacuum of space by a film of atmosphere that seemed no more dense than an eggshell. Back at Mercury Control, the flight team, headed by Chris Kraft and Kranz, kept their focus on more practical considerations. After Glenn’s first orbit, Control had received a telemetry signal indicating that his capsule’s heat shield might be loose. If that signal was correct, Glenn and the spacecraft would disintegrate in the three-thousand-degree heat generated by reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. There seemed to be only one solution to this potentially tragic problem.

If Glenn refrained from jettisoning the ship’s retro-rocket package, a normal procedure just before reentry, its titanium straps might hold the shield in place. Control advised Glenn of their decision to end his flight and ordered him to plan for reentry after his third orbit. Unwilling to burden Glenn with concern over the possible heat-shield malfunction, Control offered no explanation for their decision until he was safely home. Glenn was suspicious, but all parts of Friendship 7 seemed to him to be working properly so he concerned himself only with what was within his control. Before long, the capsule splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. ‘When I started back in through the atmosphere, when the straps that held the retropack on burned off, one of them popped up in front of the window,’ Glenn remembers. ‘I thought the retropack or the heat shield was breaking up. It was a real fireball. But the heat shield worked fine.’ Glenn’s flight was a public relations boon for the U.S. space program. He returned to a hero’s welcome and a wildly emotional New York City ticker-tape parade. The United States had made a significant step forward in its competition with the Soviet Union and its quest for the moon.

Few people knew, however, that the nation’s most famous pilot would never again fly in space. As Glenn recalls, ‘President Kennedy had passed word to NASA, and I didn’t know this for some years, that I was not to be used again on a flight, at least for a while. You can’t believe being the focal point of that kind of attention when we came back. I don’t know if he was concerned about political fallout, or what.’ Glenn was disappointed that he never again traveled into space, but declares,’I don’t feel cheated because I had such a tremendous flight.’ Three years after the confetti and streamers had blown away, John Glenn left NASA and, relegating space flight to a vivid memory, moved into another public arena. Politics is a high-profile world in which Glenn’s clean-cut image and amiable personality easily endeared him to his constituents and to the public in general. In 1974, he was elected to the U.S. Senate by his home state of Ohio, an office he has held through three more terms. Despite the passage of more than a quarter century, Glenn easily recalls the innocent joy he found in those wondrous space sunsets.

He has never lost the ability to draw inspiration from his experiences and to channel it into a positive outlook. ‘I think its an attitude,’ he says, of maintaining his inner youth. ‘I think kids have an expectation of what’s going to happen tomorrow. I think some people are able to maintain that whole thing, this expectation about what they’re looking forward to.’ Not surprisingly, Senator Glenn can easily find his time consumed by the business of Capitol Hill. But when a red-headed, freckle-faced teenager with blue eyes ablaze asks Glenn to describe a launch or splashdown, the senator from Ohio again becomes one of America’s first astronauts, as he relives that historic day in 1962 when time stood still and three space sunsets blazed like campfires of a thousand sparkling colors. This article was written by Bryan Ethier and originally published in October 1997 issue of American History Magazine. For more great articles, subscribe to American History magazine today!

First man in space - Apr 12, 1961 - HISTORY.com First man in space Publisher A+E Networks On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes. Vostok 1 orbited Earth at a maximum altitude of 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control system. The only statement attributed to Gagarin during his one hour and 48 minutes in space was, “Flight is proceeding normally; I am well.” After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Monuments were raised to him across the Soviet Union and streets renamed in his honor.

The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. Moreover, Gagarin had orbited Earth, a feat that eluded the U.S. space program until February 1962, when astronaut John Glenn made three orbits in Friendship 7. By that time, the Soviet Union had already made another leap ahead in the “space race” with the August 1961 flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in Vostok 2. Titov made 17 orbits and spent more than 25 hours in space. To Soviet propagandists, the Soviet conquest of space was evidence of the supremacy of communism over capitalism. However, to those who worked on the Vostok program and earlier on Sputnik (which launched the first satellite into space in 1957), the successes were attributable chiefly to the brilliance of one man: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. Because of his controversial past, Chief Designer Korolev was unknown in the West and to all but insiders in the USSR until his death in 1966.

Born in the Ukraine in 1906, Korolev was part of a scientific team that launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933. In 1938, his military sponsor fell prey to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s purges, and Korolev and his colleagues were also put on trial. Convicted of treason and sabotage, Korolev was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp. The Soviet authorities came to fear German rocket advances, however, and after only a year Korolev was put in charge of a prison design bureau and ordered to continue his rocketry work. In 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to learn about the V-2 rocket, which had been used to devastating effect by the Nazis against the British. The Americans had captured the rocket’s designer, Wernher von Braun, who later became head of the U.S. space program, but the Soviets acquired a fair amount of V-2 resources, including rockets, launch facilities, blueprints, and a few German V-2 technicians.

By employing this technology and his own considerable engineering talents, by 1954 Korolev had built a rocket that could carry a five-ton nuclear warhead and in 1957 launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile. That year, Korolev’s plan to launch a satellite into space was approved, and on October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was fired into Earth’s orbit. It was the first Soviet victory of the space race, and Korolev, still technically a prisoner, was officially rehabilitated. The Soviet space program under Korolev would go on to numerous space firsts in the late 1950s and early ’60s: first animal in orbit, first large scientific satellite, first man, first woman, first three men, first space walk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to impact Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon.

Throughout this time, Korolev remained anonymous, known only as the “Chief Designer.” His dream of sending cosmonauts to the moon eventually ended in failure, primarily because the Soviet lunar program received just one-tenth the funding allocated to America’s successful Apollo lunar landing program. Korolev died in 1966. Upon his death, his identity was finally revealed to the world, and he was awarded a burial in the Kremlin wall as a hero of the Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin was killed in a routine jet-aircraft test flight in 1968. His ashes were also placed in the Kremlin wall. Related Videos John Glenn: 1st American to Orbit Earth, Oldest Man in Space John Glenn: 1st American to Orbit Earth, Oldest Man in Space By Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com Contributor | December 8, 2015 04:45pm ET MORE Editor's note: John Glenn, a legendary NASA astronaut and American hero, died on Dec. 8, 2016 at age 95. Read our full obituary here .

More coverage: America's First Spaceship: Project Mercury (Infographic) The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn made history again when, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space. But before he was nationally recognized as a hero, he had put his life on the line for his country many times. Born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio, John Herschel Glenn Jr., was the son of John and Teresa Sproat Glenn. While playing in the high school band, he met Anna Margaret Castor, and later married her. After graduation, he attended Muskingum College, where he attained a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Glenn entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program. He ultimately flew 59 combat missions in the Pacific during World War II. Astronaut John Glenn photographed in space by an automatic sequence motion picture camera during his historic orbital flight on "Friendship 7" on Feb. 20, 1962. Credit: NASA After the war ended, Glenn served as an instructor for advanced flight training at Corpus Christi, Texas.

He went on to fly 90 missions in Korea, downing three MiGs during the his last nine days of combat. From there, Glenn attended Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland, then went on to serve as project officer on a number of aircraft. He attended classes at the University of Maryland for two and a half years while assigned to the Fighter Design Branch of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, the precursor to the Bureau of Naval Weapons. In July 1957, Glenn set a transcontinental speed record, flying from Los Angeles to New York in 3 hours 23 minutes. His was the first cross-country flight to average supersonic speed. Glenn was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross six times, as well as a number of other honors for his military service. He and his wife have two children. Beyond the sky In April 1959, Glenn was selected as a Project Mercury astronaut. He became part of the Mercury Seven group, the first astronauts selected by NASA. Glenn served as backup astronaut to the first two Americans in space, Alan Shepard and Virgil "Gus" Grissom.

[ Project Mercury: Photos of NASA's 1st Manned Spaceflights ] At the time, the United States was in the midst of a race with the Soviet Union to reach the stars. Russian astronaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man launched into space on April 12, 1961, beating Alan Shepard by less than a month. Gagarin's craft took him in a full orbit around Earth, making him the first person to circle the planet, as well. [ Infographic: 1st American in Orbit: How NASA & John Glenn Made History ] On Feb. 20, 1962, the United States showed that it had the same mettle as its competition. Previous flights into space by Shepard and Grissom had not traveled all the way around the planet. When Glenn blasted into space aboard Mercury's Friendship 7 capsule, he orbited Earth three times over the course of almost five hours, traveling faster than 17,000 mph. [ VIDEO: This is Friendship 7: America's 50th On-Orbit Anniversary ] But his journey was not without hazards .

After the first orbit, a mechanical problem with the automatic control system required Glenn take manual control of the craft. Sensors also indicated that the heat shield, which would protect the astronaut from the lethal temperatures created upon re-entry to the atmosphere, was loose. To help protect him on his return to Earth, Glenn kept the retrorocket pack, which was designed to be jettisoned, in place. Follow-up examination of the control system revealed that the indicator had been incorrect. The shield was fine, but the experience was surely harrowing. [ PHOTOS: John Glenn, First American in Orbit ] An active retirement Glenn retired from the Marine Corps in 1965 as a colonel. He worked as a business executive for a decade before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1974. The Ohio Democrat campaigned vigorously for funding for science, education, and space exploration. In 1984, he made a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. He served as a senator until 1999. STS-95 crewmember, astronaut and U.S. Senator John Glenn. Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth and returned to space in 1998 aboard a Space Shuttle flight.

Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz, Mark Sowa Despite his advancing age, Glenn was not yet finished with the space program. On Oct. 29, 1998, while still a senator, Glenn made history again when he rode the space shuttle Discovery to become the oldest space traveler. Over the course of nine days, the shuttle orbited Earth 134 times. Glenn served as payload specialist, participating in various experiments to test how his 77-year old body responded the weightless environment. The craft also carried the SPARTAN satellite to study solar wind, and hardware for an upcoming maintenance mission on the Hubble Space Telescope. In 2012, Glenn received the Presidential Medal of Freedom . He was also on hand for the retirement of the space shuttle Discovery , though he criticized the demise of the shuttle program as delaying research. Although Glenn's second flight into space was completely different from his first, both were historic, record-setting missions. But most Americans will always remember him as the first American to orbit the Earth .

—Nola Taylor Redd This date in science: John Glenn first American to orbit Earth | Space | EarthSky This date in science: John Glenn first American to orbit Earth By EarthSky in Space | February 20, 2016 On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He made three turns around the planet before returning safely. February 20, 1962. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth on this date. He made three turns around the planet before returning safely in his space capsule, which was called Friendship 7. He followed two Russian cosmonauts in making this early orbit of our planet: Yuri Gagarin ( April 1961) and Gherman Titov (August 1961). While Glenn was in orbit, NASA controllers received an indication that the heat shield on his craft had come loose. They instructed Glenn not to jettison the rockets underneath the heat shield during re-entry, because the rockets might be able to hold the shield in place. Fortunately, the indication turned out to be a false alarm.

Glenn returned to space at age 77 aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1998, making him the oldest person to fly in space. His mission’s primary scientific aim at that time was to study the effects of spaceflight on seniors. John Glenn climbs into the Friendship 7 spacecraft just before making his first trip into space on February 20, 1962. Photo via NASA John Glenn and Friendship 7 Here’s what John Glenn saw on February 20, 1962. Just 5 minutes and 44 seconds after launch, Glenn offered his first words about the view from his porthole: “This is Friendship 7. Can see clear back; a big cloud pattern way back across towards the Cape. Beautiful sight.” Three hours later, at the beginning of his third orbit, Glenn photographed this panoramic view of Florida from the Georgia border (right, under clouds) to just north of Cape Canaveral. His American homeland was 162 miles (260 kilometers) below. “I have the Cape in sight down there,” he noted to mission controllers. “It looks real fine from up here. I can see the whole state of Florida just laid out like on a map.

Beautiful.” Image via NASA Bottom line: John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962. His space capsule was called Friendship 7. An American orbits earth - Feb 20, 1962 - HISTORY.com An American orbits earth Publisher A+E Networks From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Hershel Glenn Jr. is successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut. Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts. A decorated pilot, he flew nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States, flying from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes. Glenn was preceded in space by two Americans, Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, and two Soviets, Yuri A. Gagarin and Gherman S. Titov.

In April 1961, Gagarin was the first man in space, and his spacecraft Vostok 1 made a full orbit before returning to Earth. Less than one month later, Shepard was launched into space aboard Freedom 7 on a suborbital flight. In July, Grissom made another brief suborbital flight aboard Liberty Bell 7. In August, with the Americans still having failed to make an orbital flight, the Russians sprinted further ahead in the space race when Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard Vostok 2, making 17 orbits. As a technological power, the United States was looking very much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans wanted to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before another Soviet space advance arrived. It was with this responsibility in mind that John Glenn lifted off from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 9:47 a.m. on February 20, 1962. Some 100,000 spectators watched on the ground nearby and millions more saw it on television.

After separating from its launching rocket, the bell-shaped Friendship 7 capsule entered into an orbit around Earth at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour. Smoothing into orbit, Glenn radioed back, “Capsule is turning around. Oh, that view is tremendous.” During Friendship 7‘s first orbit, Glenn noticed what he described as small, glowing fireflies drifting by the capsule’s tiny window. It was some time later that NASA mission control determined that the sparks were crystallized water vapor released by the capsule’s air-conditioning system. Before the end of the first orbit, a more serious problem occurred when Friendship 7‘s automatic control system began to malfunction, sending the capsule into erratic movements. At the end of the orbit, Glenn switched to manual control and regained command of the craft. Toward the end of Glenn’s third and last orbit, mission control received a mechanical signal from the spacecraft indicating that the heat shield on the base of the capsule was possibly loose. Traveling at its immense speed, the capsule would be incinerated if the shield failed to absorb and dissipate the extremely high reentry temperatures.

It was decided that the craft’s retrorockets, usually jettisoned before reentry, would be left on in order to better secure the heat shield. Less than a minute later, Friendship 7 slammed into Earth’s atmosphere. During Glenn’s fiery descent back to Earth, the straps holding the retrorockets gave way and flapped violently by his window as a shroud of ions caused by excessive friction enveloped the spacecraft, causing Glenn to lose radio contact with mission control. As mission control anxiously waited for the resumption of radio transmissions that would indicate Glenn’s survival, he watched flaming chunks of retrorocket fly by his window. After four minutes of radio silence, Glenn’s voice crackled through loudspeakers at mission control, and Friendship 7 splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. He was picked up by the USS destroyer Noa, and his first words upon stepping out of the capsule and onto the deck of the Noa were, “It was hot in there.” He had spent nearly five hours in space. Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23 President John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral.

He later addressed Congress and was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City. Out of a reluctance to risk the life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the “Clean Marine” in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964 announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio and formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate bid after seriously injuring his inner ear in a fall. In 1970, following a stint as a Royal Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated Metzenbaum, won the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In 1984, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president. In early 1998, NASA announced it had approved Glenn to serve as a payload specialist on the space shuttle Discovery. On October 29, 1998, nearly four decades after his famous orbital flight, the 77-year-old Glenn became the oldest human ever to travel in space.

During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging. In 1999, he retired from his U.S. Senate seat after four consecutive terms in office, a record for the state of Ohio. Related Videos Who was the first person to orbit Earth?please describe briefly | eNotes Who was the first person to orbit Earth?please describe briefly ms-mcgregor | High School Teacher | (Level 1) Educator Emeritus Posted on Russian Yuri Gargain was the first man to orbit the earth. He orbited the earth once before returning to earth about 90 minutes later. like 1 dislike 2 astrosonuthird | Student, Kindergarten | (Level 1) Valedictorian Posted on Yuri Gagarin revolved around the earth in outer space but Dave Kunste was the first person to walk around the Earth. like 1 dislike 0 astrosonuthird | Student, Kindergarten | (Level 1) Valedictorian Posted on astrosonu | Student | (Level 1) Valedictorian Posted on Yuri Gagarin, the first being to walk in space.

like 1 dislike 0 taangerine | Student, Grade 12 | (Level 1) Valedictorian Posted on Yuri Gagarin is the first person to orbit Earth. like 0 dislike 0 fashionableb1 | Student, Grade 10 | (Level 1) Salutatorian Posted on Yuri Gagarin from the soviets like 0 dislike 0 givingiswinning | Student, Grade 10 | (Level 1) Valedictorian Posted on zumba96 | Student, Grade 11 | (Level 3) Valedictorian Posted on Yuri Gagarin who also boosted the Soviet space program and caused space races to escalate even more.

like 0 dislike 0 fashionableb1 | Student, Grade 10 | (Level 1) Salutatorian Posted on atyourservice | Student, Grade 11 | (Level 3) Valedictorian Posted on lit24 | College Teacher | (Level 3) Valedictorian Posted on August 31, 2008 at 12:13 PM The first person to orbit the earth in a spacecraft was the Russian Cosmonaut YURI ALEXEYEVICH GAGARIN (9th March 1934 to 27th March 1968). On 12th April 1961 he became the first human to be in space and the first to orbit planet earth. The name of the spacecraft was Vostok I. The spacecraft was launched on 12th April 1961 at 6.07 hrs. and it landed back on the earth on 12th April 1961 at 7.55 hrs. He orbited once around the earth in 1hr 48 mins.

The spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and it landed in Engels close to the Saratov region. Gagarin's 'call sign' during the mission was "Cedar." like 1 dislike 1

Question: Who was the first man to orbit the Earth
Answer: Yuri Gargarin